Tisane API

Tisane API is a RESTful text-moderation service for teams building moderation into apps and online communities. It is strongest for user-generated text, especially gaming, multilingual, or context-sensitive content. Its explainable decisions are a clear advantage, but its text-only scope rules it out for teams that need a single tool for mixed media.

Overview

Tisane Labs develops natural-language processing tools for content moderation and law-enforcement applications. The API returns detailed results in milliseconds and gives human-readable reasons for moderation decisions. Deterministic outputs and explanations that can be traced and debugged are useful when a team needs to inspect why content was flagged rather than rely on an unexplained result.

Tisane handles text and supports custom policies, but not image, audio, or video moderation. It also lacks a human-review workflow, so organizations that need built-in escalation or coverage across media types should choose another approach.

Key features

The API is designed for informal and inconsistent language, including algospeak, slang, and misspellings. Teams can tailor analysis for contexts such as usernames and search queries, making it more suited to community products than a one-size-fits-all text check. It can translate foreign content while preserving original profanities and slurs, and analyze topics, entities, and sentiment.

Gaming moderation distinguishes references to in-game violence from criminal activity and can detect scammers, groomers, and trolls. That makes Tisane a more natural fit for game communities than a general text filter, though it does not replace human review.

Deployment options include the public cloud, an on-premises installation, and Tisane Embedded as an in-process library. On-prem deployment can suit privacy-sensitive or air-gapped environments. Integrations include Slack, Minecraft, Webex, Discord, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Zapier, Make, and n8n.

Pricing

Tisane uses a freemium model, with paid plans from $99 a month. Community costs nothing and includes 50,000 requests, capped at 10 hits per minute. It has no technical support, CORS support, LM Direct Access, or customization, so it is best for low-throughput evaluation or modest needs that can tolerate those omissions.

Small costs $99 a month for 100,000 requests and 120 hits per minute, with limited technical support. It raises the request and rate limits substantially over Community, but still lacks CORS support, LM Direct Access, and customization.

Medium costs $159 a month and includes 400,000 requests, 120 hits per minute, technical support, CORS support, and LM Direct Access. It suits teams needing those capabilities and more volume, but its rate limit is the same as Small. Medium Burstable costs $349 a month, keeps the 400,000-request quota, and raises the limit to 2,000 hits per minute; it is the better fit for higher bursts, not a larger monthly allowance.

Large costs $899 a month and includes 2,500,000 requests, 2,000 hits per minute, technical support, integration assistance, CORS support, LM Direct Access, and limited customization. Enterprise has custom pricing, is billed as a Server License, and offers unlimited requests subject to machine capacity with no rate limits. It includes technical support and integration assistance, CORS support, LM Direct Access, full customization, private or public cloud deployment, and native Linux and Windows versions.

Platforms

Tisane supports API, Linux, macOS, self-hosted, web, and Windows. The range includes hosted use and deployment choices for teams that need to run the software within their own environment.

Who it's for

Tisane is a strong choice for developers and moderation teams handling text-heavy communities, particularly games, multilingual services, or products where explanations and debugging matter. Its plan ladder lets teams trade price against request volume, throughput, support, and integration features. It is a poor fit for media moderation, built-in human review, or teams that need image, audio, and video analysis alongside text.

Pros and cons

• Pros: Human-readable, deterministic decisions make moderation results easier to trace and debug.
• Pros: Handling of slang, algospeak, misspellings, and context-specific analysis suits real-world community text.
• Pros: Gaming-specific distinctions and multilingual translation broaden its usefulness for specialized communities.
• Pros: Public cloud, on-premises, and embedded deployment provide options for different operating and privacy needs.
• Cons: Text-only moderation leaves image, audio, and video to other tools.
• Cons: There is no human-review workflow for teams that need escalation built into the product.
• Cons: Community's 10-hits-per-minute cap and lack of support, CORS, and customization constrain production use; Small still lacks CORS and customization.

Alternatives

For a broader comparison, see AI Content Moderation Software.

• WebPurify is worth considering when image moderation is the priority; its plans include per-image AI moderation and live moderation.
• Google Cloud Vision API is a better fit when image analysis through a freemium API is the focus.
• Amazon Rekognition Content Moderation may suit teams looking for a paid API with a free tier and video-analysis allowance.
• Hive Moderation is an option for teams seeking access to multiple moderation models through an API.
• PicPurify is a freemium alternative for teams that want API-based moderation with a free allowance and monthly plans.
• Sightengine may fit teams comparing freemium API options for image moderation.
• Detoxify is a free, self-hosted open-source library for toxic-comment classification, rather than a hosted moderation service.
• LocalMod is a free self-hosted content-moderation API alternative.

Verdict

Choose Tisane API if your priority is explainable, context-aware moderation of user-generated text, particularly in gaming or multilingual communities. The standout reason to choose it is the combination of specialized text handling and traceable decisions across multiple deployment options. Look elsewhere if you need image, audio, or video moderation or a built-in human-review process.